Department of Energy’s Small Business Vouchers program awards vouches to five bioenergy companies

In Washington, the Department of Energy’s Small Business Vouchers program awarded $8 million worth of research vouchers to 43 small businesses, of which five were related to bioenergy:

Avatar Sustainable Technologies, Syracuse, New York

Avatar Sustainable Technologies will work with the with National Renewable Energy Laboratory to develop a method to economically use waste from paper mills to sustainably produce biofuels and other biochemical products.

HelioBioSys, Woodside, California

Heliobiosys uses photosynthetic cyanobacteria to produce a competitively-priced sugar feedstock. This voucher will provide testing assistance from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratory, including an analysis of cyanobacterial growth in an outdoor cultivation system.

Mango Materials, Albany, California

Mango Materials produces biodegradable biopolymers from methane gas that can substitute for conventional, oil-based plastics. Working with Lawrence Berkeley

National Laboratory, this work will help optimize unit operations of downstream processing in large-scale systems.

Virent, Inc., Madison, Wisconsin

Virent has developed proprietary technology to catalytically convert biomass-derived feedstock into directly fungible fuels (and chemicals), at demonstration quantities. This collaboration with Argonne National Laboratory will enable further development of the catalysts towards commercial deployment.

Zymochem, Emeryville, California

Working with LBNL, Zymochem will validate its novel bioprocess scheme.